Excerpt: Burton leans more heavily on humor than horror here, playing the film’s premise for all its comic worth. Barnabas is a classic fish out of water, unfamiliar with headlights, the golden arches of McDonald’s, television, and The Carpenters.

Excerpt: It’s not easy to satirize something while at the same time making a homage to it, which seems to be the intent of the filmmakers. “Dark Shadows” is a heady brew of the whimsical Burton who made “Beetlejuice” and the darker Burton who made “Sleepy Hollow” and “Sweeney Todd.” It takes a director with Burton’s self-confidence to pull it off, and for the most part he does.

Excerpt: A loss of empathy for the hero vampire drains the lifeblood out of this project. Flaws don’t necessarily derail a film — but nothing nails the coffin shut quite like an unlikeable Barnabas Collins.

Excerpt: Made for an audience of no one, Dark Shadows is a mess of campy horror, “fish out of coffin” comedy, and gothic melodrama. In fact, it seems less like a remake of the TV soap than the 1979 Dracula spoof Love at First Bite.

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